Thursday, 10 January 2013

BARYSHNIKOV WANTS A CRACKER

I took the King to a ballet class today. Yes, that entire
sentence is chock full of contradiction. Let’s just say the kid is no
Baryshnikov. Firstly, as you can plainly see, I’m not into gender confining
activities. One man’s ballet is another man’s football. However, on the surface
I will be honest that when I think of the King, ballet is not the first thing
that comes to mind (although I’m currently envisioning his father in tights and
it is simply the most amusing thing ever). But I’ve been desperate for some new
activities to burn off some of the King’s mind boggling energy and the class
was billed as a dance/movement kind of thing. So, in my mind, I envisioned a
few pliés, a fun flying jeté and perhaps some mad running around the room where
the children pretended that they were part of Swan Lake on acid.

Well let’s just say the teacher and the King had something
far different in mind. We showed up to the class and I could tell from the word
go that the King was in one of his, ‘I’m not in a cooperative state of mind’
type moods. In fact, this has been a running theme all week. With every passing
day, I’m starting to realize that the terrible two’s that we thought had passed
us by were just taking a detour. So we walk into the room and the peace and
quiet of the space suddenly alarmed me. Peace, Quiet. The King does not do
those words very well, let alone do it in a pink tutu. The second problem, the
room contained three little girls. Not that that’s a problem in itself, but
they were sweet, docile, wearing full ballet get ups (as was the teacher),
whereas the King was dressed in a normal dude get up, jeans, t –shirt and was
anything but docile.

Trying to stay positive, we watched the previous class do
their thing and I tried to sound as encouraging as possible – while in the pit
of my stomach I had a feeling this was not going to go down like an episode of
Fame. The King seemed interested for a bit, he looked at me eagerly and said,
‘Mamma dancing dancing,’ as bits of cracker fell out of his mouth (I was
getting dirty looks from the other mothers as I don’t think crackers and ballet
go hand in hand). So I took this as a
good sign. Meanwhile, he was also lifting up his shirt and exposing his belly
to all while singing the lyrics to Twinkle Twinkle at the top of his lungs (in
all fairness, he was simply copying the class) to the ire of the other mothers who
were trying to record their little ‘princesses in pink’ on their iphones.

So the moment arrived for the King to start his class and
for the first few minutes I felt pretty positive. He followed direction, he did
a little split (sort of), he even pliéd in a kind of strange crunched down
style that I’m sure would not impress the Bolshoi Ballet. But hey, the kid was
trying and he seemed to kind of like it. Then, I’m not sure what happened, as
he suddenly dropped to the floor and rolled around making funny noises (to the
confusion of the teacher) and then got up, headed for me and demanded his shoes
be put back on. I smiled at the teacher who was coaxing him back and tried to
encourage him that they were getting to the good part – ‘look sweetie, now you
get to pretend you’re a bunny. Hop hop!’ Thinking the King would dig this.

Yeah. Not so much. The next few minutes were spent with
him horizontal demanding a cracker at the top of his lungs, followed by him
stating that Mama should go home with him, make dinner and put on Fireman Sam
(!!!) (his favorite program du jour). Again, I looked around at the other
mothers and tried to pretend like I had no idea what he was talking about
[cause you know, I’m a good parent that doesn’t let her cracker shoveling son
watch television (ahem)] and of course I had this all under control.

Let’s just say by the time they were doing their ‘princess
tour of the fairy garden’ the King had lost his composure altogether and we
hurried our ballet butts out of there. Of course on the way home he looked at
me with a huge smile and said, ‘dancing mamma, dancing!’ Yeah, don’t quit your
day job your royal highness, that’s all I can say.